If you’ve been waiting for some good news regarding the situation in Ukraine and our NATO allies this might be it. A little, anyway. Maybe. This week’s European Union summit featured a meeting between defense ministers from several EU nations where they proposed pooling their money and shipping a million rounds of artillery shells to the Ukrainian forces over the next year. This isn’t a done deal yet, but they’re proposing a model similar to the way they ordered and distributed vaccines during the pandemic. This won’t be a game changer if it’s a one-time deal (assuming it happens at all), but if it signals a greater willingness by our NATO partners in Europe to put some more of their own money into the project and boost defense manufacturing in western Europe, then it’s at least a good start. (AP)

EU leaders are set to endorse a deal aimed at sending to Ukraine 1 million rounds of artillery shells within the next 12 months to help the country counter Russia’s invasion forces.

The fast-track procedure was adopted during a meeting of foreign and defense ministers earlier this week, and leaders gathered at a summit in Brussels on Thursday will give it a political blessing, according to several senior EU diplomats.

With Ukraine facing shortages of ammunition to fight Russia, the idea of setting up a joint purchasing plan of action similar to the one devised during the coronavirus pandemic to buy vaccines was first brought to the table last month by Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas.

They’re talking about one billion euros for existing shells and another billion for new rounds of orders from the European defense manufacturing industry. That works out to a little over 2.1 billion dollars. It’s still a drop in the hat compared to what the United States is shelling out (pardon the pun), but it’s considerably better than they’ve been doing thus far.

This brings us back to a question we’ve covered here previously over the past six months or more. The major manufacturers of artillery shells and other weaponry are still mostly on a peacetime footing. They aren’t going to ramp up to the needed levels unless they have confirmed orders stretching well into the future that would justify that level of investment and expansion. More orders like this might nudge them in that direction.

A more disturbing element of this story is the fact that the EU is making these plans in advance with a schedule to deliver the first million shells over the next year. It would appear that nobody in Europe (or Washington for that matter) believes that this war is going to be over before 2024 at a minimum. And it certainly doesn’t look like it will.

So how long would the initial shipment of artillery shells last? It’s currently estimated that Ukraine is firing between 6,000 and 7,000 shells per day. So at an average of 6,500 per day, a million shells won’t even last six months. The previous rumors suggesting that Russia was on the verge of running out of ammunition haven’t panned out and they have their own supply sources to get more.

I hope that somebody from the White House has a handle on this. They should praise the EU for stepping up in this fashion but also remind them in a diplomatic way that Europe will need to do even more. The world simply cannot expect the United States to keep footing the bill for a war that’s happening in Europe’s backyard. If this war is going to stretch through the 2024 election cycle, candidates will need to deliver some straight talk to the American people as to what they plan to do about the situation in Ukraine, where all of our money has been going, and how much longer they will be willing to see this continue. And the answer can not be “indefinitely” or “as long as it takes.”